tion"--with the two distinguished mainly by the
strategies' respective targets. The target group for a party
that follows a restrictive strategy is either another party
or some social group that threatens to become an opposition
party or force, with the implication that the target group
is "outside" the government. The target for a party that
follows a strategy of subverting the political system is
probably the government, with the obvious implication that
the party in this case is itself outside the government.

Because of the apparent bipolarity in these
conceptualizations of party strategy, it might seem more
parsimonious to treat the two concepts as one, perhaps
incorporating them in a concept of "nonelectoral
orientations," as an alternate to the strategy of "open
competition in the electoral process." In such a combined
concept, the target group of the strategy would be fixed
simply by determining the governmental status of the party;
a party which is high in governmental status but which
follows a nonelectoral strategy would be assumed to be
restricting competition from opposition parties, and one low
in governmental status would be assumed to be engaging in
subverting the political system. However, by making these
assumptions, given our present state of knowledge, we may
miss identifying some interesting deviant cases. Therefore,
we treat "restricting party competition" and "subverting the
political system" as separate strategies, and we stand ready
for education otherwise by data analysis.

Operational Definition. A party's reliance on a
strategy of subverting the political system is scored in
accordance with the following weights. This scoring is done
in conjunction with variables 6.00 and 6.10 to ensure that
the sum of the orientation scores equals the arbitrary value
of 4.

0

Not oriented
to subverting the political system: the party's
strategy for placing its members in government
posts involves either open competition with
other parties or restricting party
competition.

1

Generally
speaking, the party's strategy is not oriented
to subverting the political system, but party
members engage in occasional instances of
destructive or disruptive acts against the
government. These acts are significant in their
importance but run

2

Subverting
the political system plays a minor role in the
party's overall strategy: the party may engage
in subversive acts, but its overall strategy is
not dominated by these subversive
actions.

3

Subverting
the political system plays the major role in the
party's overall strategy, but it employs other
strategic considerations in pursuing its goal:
for example, it may nominate candidates but
boycott the elections.

4

Relies
exclusively on subverting the political system
to achieve its goal.

Coding Results. Tables 7.3a and 7.3b contain the
results of our coding for BV620, "subverting the political
system." With all the parties coded, we can report that
approximately 80 percent of the parties during the 1950s
shunned a strategy of subversion completely, with the
aversion somewhat greater after 1956. However, this still
leaves some 20 percent of the parties oriented in some
degree toward stimulating system instability, although less
than 5 percent concentrated on a subversive strategy. In
many cases of these "antisystem" parties, impartial
discussions of their goal orientations were absent,
requiring coders to estimate scores for BV620 on the basis
of scanty or suspect documentation. Hence, we find a
significant -.29 correlation between BV620 and AC620,
indicating that the higher variable codes drew lower AC
codes.

Basic Variables 6.21-6.26:
Direct Tactics of Subverting the Political
System

These variables embrace specific party activities that
come to mind as direct tactics under a strategy of
subverting the political system. They are

While variables 6.11 through 6.16 and variables 6.21
through 6.26 refer to nonelectoral activities, the two sets
differ in two respects. First, they differ with respect to
the implied targets, with the former set of activities
presumably aimed at nongovernmental groups and the latter at
governmental groups or the government itself. Second, they
differ with respect to the scope of the activities, with the
former more narrowly aimed at political activities and the
latter spilling over into various aspects of social life.
This second source of distinction in nonelectoral activities
may be due largely to who controls the state's capacity for
repression, permitting it to be rather selective in exerting
force on its opponents. A party outside the government
usually operates with an inferior capacity for exerting
force and may not be able to discriminate among sectors of
life it chooses to dis-